Japanese Publishers Lash Out At Amazon's Policies

Nate the greatest writes: Amazon is in a bitter contract fight with Hachette in the U.S. and Bonnier in Germany, and now it seems the retail giant is also in conflict with publishers in Japan. Amazon has launched a new rating system in Japan which gives preference to publishers with larger ebook catalogs (and publishers that pay higher fees), leading to complaints that Amazon is using its market power to blackmail publishers. Where have we heard that complaint before?

The retailer is also being boycotted by a handful of Japanese publishers who disagree with Amazon offering a rewards program to students. The retailer gives students 10% of a book's price as points, which can be used to buy more books. This skirts Japanese fixed-price book laws, so several smaller publishers pulled their books from Amazon in protest. Businesses are out to make money and not friends, but Amazon sure is a lightning rod for conflicts, isn't it?

Comments

Businesses are out to make money and not friends

[bmo]

Halve your margin and triple your sales.

>NO BREAKS TO ANYBODY, ESPECIALLY STUDENTS

It's like they're begging for piracy to happen.

--
BMO

Amazon riding rough over industry? One recourse.

[SuperKendall]

Time to sue Apple again and make sure there is zero viable competition remaining for eBooks. Make that rubble bounce.

Simple. Easy.

[vikingpower]

Boycot Amazon. I do, and a lot of people here in central Europe do ( although almost all of the boycotters do live in large cities, with easy access to book stores ). It is actually a physical delight to go, in persona, to a a book store, browse, take your time, and buy -- or place an order for something they don't have in stock. In the latter case, getting the phone call that "your book has arrived, Mr. Faustus" is delightful, too,

Re:Simple. Easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Those got driven out of America by big chains 30 years ago. Frankly, I don't enjoy books enough to ever want to deal with a B&M store as mostly what I am buying is technical books, I'd much rather have reviews from people in the field rather then some local bookstore proprietor taking a markup for friendly service. I'd much rather deal with amazon and I'm fine with them putting the screws to the middlemen in that industry after dealing with textbooks, karma is a bitch publishers.

Re:Simple. Easy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you wholeheartedly about the joys of brick and mortar bookstores. I worked at Borders back during its last gasps, and I heard a lot of the same things from customers. The reason they went tits up however was largely due to failure to price things competitively. Even with a decent employee discount I still mostly bought off of Amazon, because Borders refused to acknowledge that they were basically the only company out there that sold at MSRP. If I buy a lot of books (and I do) and I can get them for $3 cheaper per from Amazon, plus no sales tax, I'm going to be willing to wait the two or three days that shipping takes. Or buy $20 at a time and get free shipping.

I'm also an author, with my first book coming out in the next month or so. (Lulu, nothing fancy or impressive.) Without print-on-demand and online sales there's really no way that I would be able to put out a low interest niche market work: the economy of scale just isn't there to make it worth a real publisher's time. But being able to have a no overhead sales channel through Amazon it becomes possible for my book to be picked up by some of the small independent brick and mortar stores out there who service the target market. (Read: lets me put my voice, mediocre as it might be, out there when otherwise I never would be able to.)

So it's kind of a double edged sword, providing an outlet for us nobodies but requiring established business models to adapt or die. Adapt or die is good, I just hope the brick and mortar chains do instead of being stuck in the past.

Re:Amazon riding rough over industry? One recourse

[Richard_at_work]

Oh wow, on an *Apple* computer.

That makes all the difference! There is competition in the market!

Of course it fucking matters if the competition is only within one very small segment of the market, it means a much higher cost of entry for the consumer - to read my Amazon Kindle book all I had to do was download the free Kindle reading app on any one of my Android phone, Android tablet, Apple phone, Apple tablet, Windows Phone, Windows 8 device, Apple computer, Windows 7 computer, Blackberry or a web browser for the web reader. Or buy a Kindle.

To take advantage of your "competition" I would have to buy an Apple device...

If you can't see why that is important, then you are a retard.

Amazon is providing the better service, and they are doing it without meaningful competition. Apple are locking you into their hardware ecosystem and were raising the price I have to pay on another platform to do it.

Again, if you can't see why that is important, then you are a retard.

Apple brings no competition to the market at all, they compete in one relatively small segment and have no interest in providing any service to those not using Apple devices. Fuck them.

a physical delight

[Anomalyst]

a physical delight to go, in persona, to a book store, browse

Unless you encounter bookshelves where the fantasy and vampire stories are mixed with the science fiction. I get the urge to go mix the romance shelves with the mysteries in retaliation